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Jury Awards, Verdicts & Settlements

VALUATION GUIDES One of the most difficult tasks for the personal injury attorney is to set a value for physical injury and calculate damages. Valuation guides use actual jury awards and settlement figures to set a value range or at least report what plaintiffs with similar injuries have recovered.

Combined JAS Jury Verdicts and Settlements WESTLAW database: JAS-JV Civil jury verdict and settlement summaries for several states including Georgia. Information includes case type; venue; names of parties, attorneys, and expert witnesses; summary of case; insurance carrier; settlement efforts; and dollar range of verdict or settlement. Tip: To restrict the results to Georgia cases include the field search: ST(GA or Georgia).

Dollar Verdicts: Personal Injury KF1256.A75 .D64 Balcony Provides collections of cases involving similar injuries as a gauge for predicting what a jury will award in future cases, and for predicting judicial review for excessiveness or inadequacy of awards.

Jury Verdict and Settlement Summaries WESTLAW database: LRP-JV The summaries consist of information such as case type, geographical area where a case was tried or settled, party names, attorneys' names, expert witnesses' names, factual information about the case, and verdict or settlement amounts.

Personal Injury Valuation Handbooks KF1256 .A8 P872 Reference This is a multi-volume set organized by types of injuries. The publishers collect jury verdict information nationwide and statistically analyze the information to develop tables of Basic Injury Values. The set includes a Case Evaluation Manual with a number of forms.

What’s It Worth KF1257 .W45 Balcony The material in this annual publication is intended to aid in determining the value of a plaintiff's case, or for use by a defense attorney in estimating the extent of a client's potential exposure. The material is organized by the type of injury and then further organized by amount of settlement and amounts found adequate, inadequate or excessive on appeal. LEXIS path: Legal/Area of Law - By Topic/Litigation Practice & Procedure/Find Briefs, Motions, Pleadings & Jury Verdicts/Jury Verdicts & Experts (file-name: WORTH)

OTHER RESOURCES

The Loyola Law Review, K12 .O87, produces an annual quantum study of Louisiana personal injury awards. The study is organized by type of injury: chest and stomach, leg and knee, etc., including psychological. The study is included in the Fall issue. Also available online through Hein Online, LexisNexis, and Westlaw.

The Maritime Lawyer, KF1097 .T8, from Tulane University has a survey of reported admiralty personal injury awards that appears every three to four years (usually in a Spring or Summer issue). The cases are admiralty or maritime cases and the plaintiffs are typically involved in commercial shipping including cruise ships.

Many issues of the The National Law Journal include a Verdicts & Settlements column. The information is produced by VerdictSearch which is a jury verdict research company, www.verdictsearch.com. Westlaw compiles this information in the National Law Journal Annual Jury Verdict Reports VerdictSearch also presents the top 100 awards of the year, currently for 2007.

MoreLaw.com has a keyword searchable database with basic case information.

PRACTICE GUIDES

The following titles focus on broader issues concerning damages such as identifying the appropriate damages, locating damages information, and evidentiary concerns. The print titles are currently updated by pocket parts, supplements, or new pages.